One of the world’s greatest inventors, Thomas Edison, said that none of his inventions came by accident; “What it all boils down to is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration” (Harper’s Monthly, September 1932).

Most business owners share an entrepreneurial spirit. They might have great ideas, they may be highly creative, they might have specialist experience and know-how or perhaps they might be fabulous at distribution and sales. This spirit is the backbone of their business and the reason for their success.

But this spirit alone is not enough to make the business thrive. Annoyingly, for most creative and busy business owners, the business needs their absolute commitment to getting the basics right. Indeed this commitment is the discipline and diligence that represents the ‘perspiration’ for the owner.

For a long time, we have described this as the Hygiene Factors. The following aspects of business practice are the most obvious areas warranting discipline and diligence:

• Debtors’ management, cash flow planning and monitoring, yesterday’s sales, gross profit margins by sector, class and line, and productivity.
• Production and monitoring of indicators of the performance of the key areas of the business.  There are literally hundreds of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can succinctly tell the business owner in seconds what is happening inside their business.
• Up-to-date ratios, quick simple measures and a good “one-page” dashboard to highlight exemptions, successes and problems. A monthly profit and loss report is important but is too general and late to help manage most businesses.
• Accurate budgeting of forecast profit and loss, balance sheet and hopefully also cash flow can provide an early indicator of problems and deliver a yardstick to enable monthly comparisons throughout the year.

Obviously there are many other areas that can warrant specific attention, but with these matters under the microscope, it can be said that; “What gets monitored, gets controlled.”

Most business owners can get help in designing, building and implementing a set of good Hygiene measures from their external accountants or business advisors. But in the end, driving discipline and diligence is usually not much fun.

However the processes required for collating and assembling this information can be built into the systems and procedures for the business and the owner can usually rely on their people to produce the information in a timely manner. All they have to do then is read the reports, understand the picture and of course, act upon it quickly.

And that is what the perspiration is all about!